Cos my goodness it's been a slow week, I've been ill, and work's been so tough. Finally had a breakthough this afternoon, squashing a couple of bugs, but it's just been hard.

We're going to our friend Caz's for dinner tomorrow, which will be great, I love spending time with friends, and just relaxing.

This time next week, we'll be heading down to Somerset, Soul Survivor is approaching again. We're leading the Word Projection team again this year, and I've been helping sort out internet connectivity for the office while they're down on site. should be a quality few weeks.

I was asked to make some comments at work about Linux distributions, and what's to stop them closing their code, as well as Linux's relationship (ahem) with Microsoft, and the SCO case. What follows is what I said (with the approval of my boss to publish it publically)

All the Linux distributors take the GNU/Linux system (that is to say, the GNU Operating System that has been under development by the FSF and volunteers since the early 80's to produce an replacement for UN*X that is totally untainted by proprietary AT&T code with the Linux kernel) and they "package" it.

Now, the packaging takes a number of forms, the key is in the tools provided, and the base configuration. Each distributor has their own installation and configuration tool[s]. Red Hat has Anaconda, SuSE has YaST, Mandrake has *drake, and Debian has dpackage, to name a few of the major players. These tools take care of the installation and basic configuration.

In addition, the distributors configure the various pieces of software so that the default setup is consistent with their particular emphasis and ethos. SuSE, for example, being a German company produce a very secure basic configuration, and with the help of SuSEconfig (a very complex set of scripts that links in with YaST) ensure that everything works together - ie if you use SuSE's tools to make a change to your machine's name (for example), then where that name needs to be included in, say, the Apache configuration files, it's done automagically for you.

What's to stop companies like SuSE, or Red Hat continuing to publish source code? The law for a start. They don't actually own the vast majority of the code that's included in their products, so they're simply not allowed to change the licensing on it. The kernel, for example, is owned by Linus, Alan, Marcelo, Dave J, and all the hundred of other hackers whose code Linus has accepted in to the main tree. [For Linus read Marcelo for the 2.4 tree, Alan for 2.2]. Now, of them, Alan works for Red Hat, Marcelo for Conectiva and Dave J for SuSE, but their code is copyright to them, and licensed under the GPL.

Getting beyond the kernel, none of the code really belongs to Red Hat, other than the Anaconda code (and that's GPL), only the YaST/SuSEconfig code belongs to SuSE (that's under a semi-free license) - you get the idea.

It's a mistake to think that these companies don't make money though, they do, although mostly not from their consumer distributions. They sell services, do consultancy and sell hugely expensive "enterprise" distributions that come with serious support contracts. For example, I'm pretty sure that SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 (SLES8) for IBM Mainframes runs to thousands of dollars, and sells in not insignificant numbers.

The SCO case is a distraction, SCO have been sinking fast for years. Their version of UN*X is bad beyond belief, consistently ranked bottom in terms of performance and security. Caldera who were a GNU/Linux company bought the remnants of SCO after the company collapsed back in 2000. Caldera were never really a favoured company in the community either, their distribution was woefully badly maintained, in short, it bit the big one. The SCO Group (as they're now called) has realised that in terms of Linux, they've been left behind. They lost just about all their hackers to SuSE last year. They joined the United Linux consortium as an attempt to rescue themselves, but everyone knew that UL was basically SuSE, and so the other consortium members were little more than reseller channels. And so, in a last-ditch effort to get some cash from the company, it's executives have launched this ludicrous legal case against IBM.

The fact is that their case is based upon inaccurate claims, and is so obviously a scam as to be beyond a joke. They also seem to be trying to extort money from Linux users by spreading Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about it's legal status. Interestingly, since this has started, the SCO stock price (and bear in mind that it's major shareholders are those executives behind the case) has rocketed in price - someone's getting very rich off this even if it doesn't get to court. Also, Microsoft, who would like nothing more than to crush Linux like they crushed OS/2, invested in SCO just before it all started.

To compare Red Hat to Microsoft is like comparing apples and oranges. Apples and oranges are both fruits, there the similarity ends. M$ and RH are both Nasdaq listed companies, and there the similarity ends. To explain all the evil aspects of Microsoft would consume far too much time, but we all know that their approach is always to exert control over their users, and to extend their influence in political circles. Bush's regime is owned by big business like Microsoft, and Blair took time out of the last General Election campaign to advertise the launch of Windows XP.

Free Software, and the companies who support, develop and sell it, like SuSE and Red Hat are all about giving choice and control back to the user. (In the case of a company, the user is the IT department, not the individual at a desk). If you don't like the way something works, you can change it. If you're happy with something, you don't have to upgrade the moment the vendor tells you to jump. You computers become your possessions again, and you decide how they are used, rather than just the home to something you have rented from Microsoft under license terms that they can change at any time.

More information on the SCO vs IBM case be found at http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html.

Well, Monday anyway...

Released ULB GNOME 0.2 - updated Nautilus, gnome-desktop, uses Vera fonts by default, and has themes: view in Nautilus, I think it's gorgeous.

Good weekend, watched a bunch of movies on Saturday (Ferris Bueller, 51st State, Final Destination), then we were teaching on 'Hearing God' at the Ministry Training afternoon at church yesterday, seemed to go rather well, and there were a lot of words for people.

Building AbiWord 1.99.3 at the mo, should have it uploaded before I go home...

Well, today I announced the availability of ULB GNOME 0.1, not quite the same deal as I'd originally planned, but a drop-in replacement for SuSE's core GNOME packages, to improve the default setup, and fix some of the problems a lot of people had with the GNOME setup in 8.2.

Well, my DSL (where this blog is hosted) should be more stable now, I've dropped my Alcat-hell USB DSL modem in favour of a nice Netgear DSL router. It may just be my imagination, but the line seems quick er as a result too.

Was looking at the gPhoto CVS status today, looks like a fair bit of code's been checked in for the Sipix cams, including the blink since I last checked, so I've grabbed a CVS snapshot, and will give it a whirl tonight.

Feeling rather ill, been getting worse over the last couple of days, think it's a virus of some sort - erk.

...and not just because of the fun of the last few days ;-)

It makes me very happy that a project I've been working on for the last few weeks may well get a public airing early next week, so watch this space...

It's just about the weekend, and my brain is all Perled out ;-)

Well, my musings yesterday seem to have been answered in a fairly round about way. As part of considering what to do, I had a report done on the traffic usr local bin receives by my boss. The answer was a lot, and my initial feeling was that the site would have to go offline, or move elsewhere.

Seems I over-reacted a bit, but I do think that increasing the disk space & bandwidth the site uses by the extent required to do a GNOME distro would be tempting fate a bit, so ULB stays the way it is.

My employers continue to provide ULB to the community as much as I do, I applaud them for allowing me to use their network to host a site the appears to be rather important (judging by the messages of goodwill I've had over the last couple of days)

So, another day, another core GNOME package on usr local bin, this time it's gnome-panel.

And so, I take another step towards the point where I might as well just do a full GNOME install for SuSE (ULB GNOME has a nice ring to it...).

Thing is, I don't want to create a situation where I force SuSE users to install the full GNOME setup from my site just so they can use the apps they want (which would be linked against the updated versions of libraries).

So, I need two streams - packages built on as close to a clean SuSE install as poss (with YOU updates and relevant deps updated as required), and a full desktop install.

In order to do that, I need hardware, I'll need a build machine to build the latter packages on, to ensure to tainting of the vanilla SuSE intended packages.

There's no way I can afford to do that! So, do I setup a PayPal account for people to contribute? What's the tax situation for that in the UK? It certainly wouldn't be paid work I'd be doing, people contributing wouldn't be able to dictate what I do with the packages or the site, but at the same time I'm not a charity.

And would people donate money?

Answers on a postcard I guess...

Had an appointment with an allergy specialist today about my pollen allergy. Turns out that I could be a candidate for desensitisation! Unfortunately, it takes somewhere in the region of 3 ^1/2 years to do, and for the first half year it means taking an afternoon off work every week or other week. not the most practical option. Add to that the fact that it's only effective to the point of making regular anti-hystemines work properly, and it's not a life-long solution, and I decided that at this time it wasn't the best option.